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When Salem's family finally retrieved his body, they found it badly burned, almost unrecognizable, and tossed dozens of meters from the location where he had been killed by subsequent bombardments. The death toll had reached such unbearable levels he could not be buried in Shujaiya, where the cemetery was overfull. When Shamaly's finally found a place to bury him, they had to open a pre-existing grave because that cemetery was also full. This was just one of many stories I heard this week of a rushed burial, a family thrown into chaos, and a young life truncated and denied dignity in death.
Salem's cousin, Hind Al Qattawi, whipped out a laptop and played for me a clip of a report on the killing by NBC's Ayman Mohyeldin. Al Qattawi had wanted to demonstrate for me the international impact the incident made, but instead, she summoned barely submerged emotions back to the surface. As soon as the video of Salem's murder began to play, his mother, Amina, sobbed openly.
"The real problem is not just losing your home in the bombardment," Muhammad Al Qattawi, the brother of Hind, told me. "The problem is you have lost your future, you lose your hope, and you can even lose your mind. Two million people here are on the verge of losing their minds."
He handed me a packet of pills that had been prescribed to various family members. Deprived of justice, they had been given antidepressants to numb their despair.
Among those suffering most was Salem's younger brother. The slightly built 14-year-old recalled his brother as a bright accounting student who paid for his education by working in his father's corner store. He was one of his best friends.
"We used to go out with him whenever we were bored and he used to take us places," Waseem said, fighting back tears. "Now, he's gone, and there's no one else to fill his place."
When Waseem recovered, I asked him what he wanted to be when he came of age. He replied without pause that he planned to join the resistance. A look of intentness had replaced his sorrow. He said he had not considered becoming a fighter until the war came down on Shujaiya.
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